--- In STMFC@..., Bruce Smith <smithbf@...> wrote:

Tank Cars - Mainly private roads. Again, percentages depend on
location. If you model the refinery, then you will want to heavily
bias your fleet to cars leased by the company running the

refinery.

Likewise, if you model an oil distributor as a delivery point,
typically it will be served by cars leased or owned by that

company.

Group, what % of private owner tank cars would you estimate in
the '40s? Shipper marked cars owned by the leasing companies? Some of
these leased cars alomsot look like billboards.

Ed

On Mar 22, 2006, at 12:36 PM, ed_mines wrote:

Group, what % of private owner tank cars would you estimate in
the '40s? Shipper marked cars owned by the leasing companies? Some of
these leased cars alomsot look like billboards.

Ed,

Tim Gilbert provided the following information back in 2001.

On December 31, 1942 the ownership of US tank cars was:
Total Railroad-Owned 9,163
Total Privately Owned 140,971
Total "American" Owned 149,426

I'm not sure what percentage of the private cars were "plain jane" and what were more decorated.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin
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Bruce Smith wrote:

On Mar 22, 2006, at 12:36 PM, ed_mines wrote:

Group, what % of private owner tank cars would you estimate in
the '40s? Shipper marked cars owned by the leasing companies? Some of
these leased cars alomsot look like billboards.

Ed,

Tim Gilbert provided the following information back in 2001.

On December 31, 1942 the ownership of US tank cars was:
Total Railroad-Owned 9,163
Total Privately Owned 140,971
Total "American" Owned 149,426

I'm not sure what percentage of the private cars were "plain jane" and what were more decorated.

Bruce,

Tank Car ownership was provided for the first time in the 1954 Blue Book. The roster totals can be broken down into the following categories:

Total US Tank Cars 158,112 100.0%
Railroad-Owned 6,949 4.4%
Privately Owned 151,183 95.6%
Private Car Lines 111,615 70.6%
Shipper-Owned 31,246 19.8%
Unknown 8,322 5.3%

Among the 111,183 privately owned tank cars, GATC owned 48,134 (30.5% of the 158 thousand total) under its GATX, TCX and other reporting marks; UTLX was second with 42,121 (26.6%) - these two firms owned 57.1% of all tank cars in the US. Shippers Tank Line was a distant third with 12,051 (7.6%).

The only UTLX tank cars having shipper's logos were the few Skelgas cars - otherwise plain black with yellow or gold lettering. GATC had a more "logo'd" fleet than UTLX.

The largest shipper-owned fleets were Sinclair (4,611 cars - 2.9% of the national fleet) and Warren Petroleum (4,180 or 2.6% of the national fleet). In the late 1950's, UTLX bought the Sinclair fleet.

Hope this helps, Tim Gilbert

From: Tim Gilbert <tgilbert@...>

Among the 111,183 privately owned tank cars, GATC owned 48,134 (30.5% of
the 158 thousand total) under its GATX, TCX and other reporting marks;
UTLX was second with 42,121 (26.6%) - these two firms owned 57.1% of all
tank cars in the US.

=======================================================

Or a more concise way of saying to modelers is: Unless you model the
N&W or one of the other coal-intensive roads, about 5% (1 in 20) of all
the cars on your layout should be either GATC or UTLX tank cars.

Now here's a fun newbie test: List all of the accurate models of GATC
or UTLX tank cars in HO scale (not brass imports or resin kits) for steam
era modelers.

(...... Jeopardy music playing .....)

Time's up! You guessed: none? THAT'S RIGHT! What do we have for
our modeling contestant tonight? Wow! An annual trip to Naperville
(no expenses paid) and you get to scratchbuild your entire roster of
General American tank cars! (You can buy some UT kits in resin.)

You do get the satisfaction of being a steam era modeler. For people
who model the 1980's to the present, the percentage of scratchbuilt
tank cars goes from 5% to about 20% of the entire roster.

Tim O'Connor

timboconnor@... wrote:

From: Tim Gilbert <tgilbert@...>

Among the 111,183 privately owned tank cars, GATC owned 48,134

(30.5% of

the 158 thousand total) under its GATX, TCX and other reporting marks;
UTLX was second with 42,121 (26.6%) - these two firms owned 57.1% of

all

tank cars in the US.

=======================================================

Or a more concise way of saying to modelers is: Unless you model the
N&W or one of the other coal-intensive roads, about 5% (1 in 20) of all
the cars on your layout should be either GATC or UTLX tank cars.

Tim

You are becoming a "Chubbist" with your one in twenty statement - actually what you mean that one in 20 freight cars on line nationally were tank cars, and about 60% of those tank cars should be owned by GATC or UTLX.

I don't buy that your one in twenty cars will be tank cars nor that the six out of ten tank cars will be owned by GATC or UTLX maxims can be applied across the board.

Because of tank cars being either owned by shippers (or consignees) or leased by them, tank cars were usually tethered to the lessee or shipper/owner. When empty, the leash was pulled so the cars came back home. A good percentage of the tank cars were either owned or leased by oil companies. These companies had primarily regional markets - for national distribution, pipelines, barges or ocean shipping was used. Therefore, the radius from which these petroleum tank cars operated was limited.

UTLX leased to oil companies until the mid-1950's. Their prime lessees were the old Standard Oil Companies. Jersey Standard, Sohio and SoCal used UTLX exclusively while Socony & Standard of Indiana bought companies who had their own tank cars which they kept out from UTLX's wing.

GATX's business was more diverse than UTLX. Besides oil companies (they bought Texaco's fleet in 1935), their lessees ranged from Proctor & Gamble, meat packers - in 1949, they leased two cars to the town of Minburn Iowa water company to haul water from the Des Moines River to Minburn for a couple of months.

What must be done is to ID more of the customers of private tank car lines. I am just skeptical of using GATC and UTLX as "generic" tank cars.

But I agree with you completely upon the lack of GATC and UTLX tank car models - not enough diverse pretty logos to attract the toy train crowd I suppose.

Tim Gilbert

Tim
You are becoming a "Chubbist" with your one in twenty statement -
actually what you mean that one in 20 freight cars on line nationally
were tank cars

( I was eliminating coal hoppers and coal gons -- I figure that accounts
for a sizable % of the total. )

So what's wrong with Chubb? He developed the C-MRI, the bleeding edge
of digital train control when most folks were challenged wiring up Atlas
snap switches. And AFAIK, he actually built a couple of major layouts.
Sad to say, most of the historians aren't interested in that aspect of
the hobby. And so my message was addressed to newbie layout builders,
who should be apprised what a morass they may be getting into with
faithful-to-the-last-drop prototype model builders... or historians. :-)

Tim O'Connor